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Everton blew chance to win Capital One Cup with Leeds defeat

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Sometimes you don’t need more than 140 characters to make a point.

David Moyes had barely reached the tunnel at Elland Road on Tuesday evening when one of his former players published a hugely insightful tweet.

‘Wouldn’t want to be in the Everton changing room with Moyesy after that,’ said Nigel Martyn, one-time Everton goalkeeper and a man whom the manager rates as his best ever signing at Goodison Park. ‘He looked furious. Leeds deserved to win though. Honest assessment.’

Plenty to ponder: David Moyes (left) watched his side lose to Leeds United

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While Moyes did not strip the paint off the walls with a tirade when his players returned to their dressing room, there was no disguising the darkness of his mood after Everton’s shock Capital One Cup slip up at Leeds.

Part fury, part disbelief, the performance was totally out of keeping with everything that had preceded it. Everton have been vibrant in the early stages of this campaign, winning admirers and plenty of points with their style.

The squad that he has painstakingly put together is widely-regarded as having the potential to be the best in the 10-and-a-half years that Moyes has been at the helm, so even accounting for the changes he was going to make, Everton should have had sufficient quality to beat Leeds.

Moyes selected eight full internationals to begin the game on Tuesday and he would have been as surprised as anyone that Everton made such a sluggish start that they failed to recover. The question many Evertonians were asking, though, was simple: why so many changes?

Progress in the Barclays Premier League always has and always will be Moyes’ top priority, so it was understandable he wanted to protect some of those who have helped contribute to Everton’s flying start. If results go their way on Saturday, they could finish the day top of the tree.

But the Capital One Cup offered a glorious opportunity and a genuinely achievable shot at claiming the club’s first silverware since 1995. In some ways, it would have been easier to blood the likes of Magaye Gueye, Bryan Oviedo and Francisco Junior against Southampton rather than Leeds.

Opener: Aidan White put Leeds in front early in the Capital One Cup clash

‘I’ve got plenty of sympathy for David Moyes because on one hand he needs to blood his fringe players and ultimately the only way of assessing whether they’re good enough is in games,’ said Howard Kendall, who remains the last manager to take Everton to the League Cup final in 1984.

‘But when you send out such a weakened team and lose, all it does in my opinion is effectively devalue the cup itself. It makes me wonder whether we’d be better deciding as a Premier League – and as football fans – whether we want to cherish the cup or scrap it.’

There was absolutely no suggesting before the game that Everton were devaluing the competition. Assistant manager Steve Round spoke enthusiastically about the time he won it with Middlesbrough in 2004 and why he was desperate to do so again.

The way in which Moyes reacted afterwards also confirmed how important he considered it. For all the progress Everton have made in the decade he has been at the helm, it gnaws away at him that he hasn’t been able to provide a silver lining.

Beaten: Everton have one less chance of winning silverware this season

‘I am embarrassed about the (fuss being made of the) 10 years – people see it as an achievement but I suppose if I saw another manager doing 10 years at a Premier League club that would be really good,’ he said before the anniversary of his appointment in March.

‘The other part of that is me not winning anything. I brings that up because if I don’t there will be someone who says: “Ha, ha! He’s not won anything.” But I can think of some clubs who have spent a lot of money and gone a lot of years without winning anything. 

‘It is not an easy thing to do in the Premier League with the top four. The FA Cup (in 2009) was the closest I have been and I would like to get much closer to cup finals and semi-finals when you are in with a chance but that is not easy.’ 

That is true but some competitions are easier to navigate than others.

There is little doubt that Moyes will rue this missed chance but it should not detract from the positive progress Everton have made in 2012. Who knows? It may even be a catalyst for accelerating the next step on the journey.

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